At work on Thursday we took a little quiz, best scores got a gift card to Target. The questions come from the US Citizenship test. I thought I’d share it with you today, see how well you all do! For the record, you have to score at least 80% to become a citizen. There’s 30 questions so that means you need to get 24 correct. The first 20 I found to be easy, but the last 10 were quite difficult. No consulting Father Google!

What is the title of the National Anthem?

Oh, Say Can You See

God Bless America

America the Beautiful

The Star Spangled Banner

Which of the following rights is guaranteed by the first amendment?

Right to bear arms

Right to vote

Freedom of religion

All of the above

What is the title of the head of a city government?

Mayor

Governor

Chancellor

Chairman of the Board

Who has the ability to declare war?

The President

The Secretary of Defense

The Joint Chiefs

The Congress

How many full terms may a Senator serve?

1

6

4

No term limits for Senators

How many full terms can a President serve?

1

2

4

6

How many years is a full term for a Representative?

1

2

4

6

Which amendment sets the minimum voting age to 18?

1st

18th

19th

26th

Who becomes President if both the President and Vice President die?

The Speaker of the House

The Secretary of Defense

The Chief Justice

The First Lady

On July 4th, 1776 we declared independence from whom?

Germany

Great Britain

Spain

Rome

How amny branches of government do we have?

1

2

3

zero

Which is part of the Judicial branch at the federal level?

The Supreme Court

The Congress

The Senate

The Presidential Cabinet

Who elects the President of the United States?

The House of Representatives

The Electoral College

The Senate

The State Governors

How many states are there?

10

13

50

100

How many stripes are there on the American flag?

10

13

50

100

Who was the President of the United States during the civil war?

Abraham Lincoln

George Washington

Ulysses S Grant

Lyndon B Johnson

Who is the current President of the United States?

George Bush

Barak Obama

Hillary Clinton

Joe Biden

Who is the current Vice President of the United States?

George Bush

Barak Obama

Dick Cheney

Joe Biden

Why did the Pilgrims come to America?

to establish a trade route with India

to set up fur trade with the natives

to establish a new nation

to fin religious freedom

How many total Senators are there?

10

13

50

100

The constitution has how may amendments?

23

27

31

33

How many amendments have been proposed officially by Congress but never ratified?

none

1

6

12

Which of these amendments is a ratified and current amendment?

Declaring it illegal to desecrate the American Flag

Equality of rights reguardless of gender

Restricting marriage in all States to be between a man and a woman

Prohibiting the importing of liquor into States where it is illegal

In what year was the last amendment ratified?

1868

1920

1961

1992

What is the official language of the United States?

none

Latin

English

Esperanto

Who was the first Vice President of the United States?

George Washington

John Adams

Thomas Jefferson

Andrew Jackson

Who said “Give me liberty or give me death”?

Nathan Hale

Patrick Henry

John Wilkes Booth

Thomas Paine

How many Presidents were assassinated while in office?

1

2

4

6

Which of these presidents was born in Texas?

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Richard Nixon

Ronald Reagan

George W Bush

How many Presidents have been impeached?

none

1

2

4

For the record I got 24 out of 30. I’ll come back and post the answers in a day or two!

Just a quick note to let you know that I’m going to move my Good Friday posts to Mondays. As Steve found out, there is more readership on weekdays and it’s just plain easier for me to get a post up on Monday than Friday.

With The Hubby’s surgery last week he’s still not up to working full days so we’ve both been working half of the day at the office and the other half at home. I’ve discovered from this that I would have a hard time working from home full time, there’s so many more distractions at home than there are at the office. I’m really thankful that I have a supervisor that will allow me to work from home, he even let me use his laptop at home.

Crafty Thursday

Every Thursday me and two of my girlfriends get together for coffee, but lately we’ve been meeting at one of our houses and having some craft time. One of them just got married so she’s been out for a couple of weeks. This week was her second week back for our Thursday evening. We got to see a bunch of her wedding and honeymoon photos. I got a few blocks done on the two quilts I’m currently working on. I’ve also got a tough decision I need to make here real soon and I got to talk it out with them. It was good to have all three of us back together!

I’m sure there’s other stuff, but since it’s kind of late at night and I have to get up early in the morning I’m going to cut it short here. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Every Friday I write a post about the good things from the previous week in an effort to focus on the positive things in my life. You can see all my Good Friday posts here.

Surgery

The Hubby found out on Monday that he needed to have surgery on Tuesday. It’s been a whirlwind couple of days! The surgery went smoothly, no complications. He is recovering well, albeit slower than he would like. I think I must be insane because I’m letting him go to a men’s retreat today and tomorrow. He promises he won’t lift anything and I’ve called his buddies that are going to be there and asked them to keep an eye on him. Hopefully they’ll keep him in line🙂

Birdies

We have a little birdie that has made a nest in a hanging basket on our back porch. The eggs have hatched in the last few days and the baby birdies have brought many squee’s out of me. They are tiny and adorable and amazing. I’ll put up some pictures this weekend, I don’t have my camera with me today. Before I get any angry emails/comments we have been very careful not to disturb the mommy bird and her babies. We haven’t touched any of them and we only go near the nest when she leaves to get food (or whatever a mommy bird does). She’s actually gotten acclimated to our presence over the past few weeks. At first she would fly off any time we opened the back door. Gradually she started staying longer and would only fly away if we got too close. Now she’ll let me get within a 5 or 6 feet of the basket before flying away. Of course now that the babies have hatched we’re very careful to not get so close that she flies away.

Birthdays

Two of my good friends, Katie and her hubby, have birthdays this week. They’re having a party this weekend and if the weather permits we’ll all bring our puppy dogs and go hang out at the lake. We all turn 27 this year… thankfully I’ll be the last to get a year older🙂

Back Cover, Shakespeare’s Landlord: Lily Bard is a loner. Other than the day-to-day workings of her cleaning and errand-running service, she pays little attention to the town around her. But when her landlord is murdered, Lily is singled out as the prime suspect, and proving her innocence will depend on finding the real killer in quiet, secretive Shakespeare.

Back Cover, Shakespeare’s Champion: There’s something rotten in Shakespeare… Lily Bard was running from shattering memories when she moved to Shakespeare, Arkansas. Now cleaning houses pays her bills. Working out helps her heal. Still protecting her scars, she hides a hard body and impressive skill at martial arts under baggy sweats. And nobody knows how strong she is until racial violence has her looking behind closed doors for a killer–doors to which a housecleaner might have the key.

Back Cover, Shakespeare’s Christmas: Even in a sleepy Arkansas town, the holidays can be murder. Lily Bard is going home for the holidays. More comfortable in baggy sweats than bridesmaid’s frills, Lily isn’t thrilled about attending her estranged sister’s wedding. She has moved to Shakespeare, Arkansas, to start a new life, cleaning houses for a living, trying to forget the violence that once nearly destroyed her. Now she’s heading back to home and hearth–just in time for murder.

I’m a big fan of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse books. Big Fan. I had been meaning to read some of her stuff for a while now and while looking for something to entertain myself while waiting in line at the courthouse I bought the first one for my iPhone-Kindle.

Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed. I bought the next two books hoping the first one was a fluke, but after the same problems with all three books, I can’t make myself buy the fourth (there’s 5 so far in the series if memory serves).

The plot is very well done. Harris is excellent at this aspect of writing. Plotting, pacing, setting… she’s got it down. In this series it’s the characters that fall short. Lily is just… flat. She’s one dimensional. It’s not that I don’t like Lily, I think I do, she just doesn’t jump off the page at me the way Sookie does. I don’t feel like she grows or changes as a person.

All three of the books felt really short. Maybe I just read them fast, but every time I got to the last page and thought “Really? That’s it?” I think I wanted there to be more, that maybe the books would have been better if there was more to them.

Summary

Unfortunately, the best I can give these books is a big, fat, “Meh.” I’ll give them 2 *’s. If you decide to read them, don’t buy, get them from the library.

Every Friday I write a post about the good things from the previous week in an effort to focus on the positive things in my life. You can see all my Good Friday posts here.

Oh. My. Gooses! I can’t believe it’s already May! Where did the spring go? Here in Texas we are officially into summer. The high yesterday was 93, I think.

Field Trip

My department at work is mostly field staff, it’s just me and my department head in the home office. Every now and then we all get together, usually everyone comes into town and we have meetings during the working hours and go out to dinner and sometimes go do something together after work. This time my boss decided that we didn’t need all the meetings, just the get-together! We all met up in Salado; the guys went golfing and the girls went shopping then we all met up for dinner. I had a good time, got a free meal, and got to get paid to go shopping🙂

Date Night

Date Night this week was kind of an epic adventure. We went out to Cabella’s to get The Hubby some gear for his mens retreat next week. Cabella’s is in Buda, if you’re not familiar with Central Texas, Pflugerville, where I live, is on the far north side of Austin, and Buda is on the far south side. It was about an hour drive down there. We looked around for quite a while, if you’ve never been to a Cabella’s it’s kind of cool just how much stuff they have. We then headed back home and watched The Proposal. I had already seen it and The Hubby was skeptical about watching a chick flick but by the end he admitted that it’s a very funny movie.

Baking

I’ve been baking something every Wednesday for Date Night and I’ve now decided to make it a regular thing. This week was Chocolate pomegranate Cake. I don’t have any pictures, but here’s the recipe (from BakingBites.com again). The cake is good, but it needs a little… something. It’s a bit dry by itself. The recipe calls for dusting with powdered sugar or cocoa powder, but that just doesn’t cut it. I served it with ice cream last night and that worked well. I think tonight I’ll try a simple glaze and see if I like that better. Maybe I just need to serve it with coffee?

Anywhoo, she’s absolutely correct, once you bake the cake you can’t really taste the pomegranate juice, it’s just got a hint of fruityness. If you didn’t know what was in it, I don’t think you could tell it was pomegranate juice.

Quilting Night

My girlfriend and I had another quilting night. Alas, the project I started last week (week before? not sure) has come to a halt. I got all the blocks finished and was starting to put it all together and realized that I’m missing block 7. DOH! I’m lucky I realized this right now, because Joann’s has just rolled over their Block of the Month projects. I actually can’t get block 7 anymore, but I’ve ordered a duplicate of one of the other blocks to fill the hole.

Since that project is at a standstill, I started the other BOM project that I bought at the same time. It’s up on the Crafts in Progress page now too. These BOM projects go together so very quickly I’m hoping to just knock these two out real soon and then we’ll have some homemade quilts around the house!